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All of these criteria at the end of the day lead back to ensuring that there isn’t some hidden cost, That there isn’t something that’s gonna suppress the increasing value of, of your property, That there are reasons why your property is going to increase in value. So all of these criteria are very specific in nature and are carefully selected specifically to ensure that we can maximize return on investment.

What would your life look like if you could replace all of your working income with simple and conservative investments that could do it for you? Over the last 13 years, we’ve helped thousands of clients transact over half a billion dollars in simple and conservative real estate transactions, allowing them to begin replacing their work income with real estate investment income.

Each week, we’ll be pulling back the curtain on the ins and outs of real time retirement based real estate transac. That will transform your financial future even if you have no real estate experience. This is replace Your Income with me, Kevin Clayson and Steve Earl. Well, hello everybody and welcome to Replace Your Income.

As always, I’m Kevin Clayson and I’m here with my number one guy. Steve Earl, how’s it going, Kev? Good. What’s up man? How are you? Doing well. So, uh, we are so excited to be with you guys. First of all, first and foremost, we just wanna say a huge thank you because, uh, launch week was a huge success for us, and, uh, that was only because of you.

If you’re listening right now, thank you. If you shared the podcast with someone, Thank you. If you went and you gave us a review, thank you. If you did none of those things, but you didn’t turn us off, um, after the first five seconds. Thank you. Because we really appreciate it and so thank you for listening and thank you for being a part of this little journey and this kind of little passion project that we are a part of.

We know that we would not, Just so you guys know, it was so awesome. We launched this thing and you guys got us up into the top hundred of investing podcasts on Apple Podcasts in America. Which was with within. That’s amazing thing launching and so thank you so much for that. We are so excited. And it kind of gave, I don’t know Steve, I don’t know about you, but it kind of like lit my fire or at least turned the gas up a little bit to say keep doing this cuz people are liking it.

Is that kind of the feedback? Yeah, I kind of came kicking in, screaming into this whole thing and I’ve just had a lot of fun. It’s been a lot of fun like recording these conversations and just chatting with you. It’s been a lot of fun. I’ve received a lot of text messages and emails from, uh, individuals who I know and, uh, quite frankly, from a lot of our clients who I haven’t talked to in a long time personally, and then from individuals that I, I haven’t known before.

And so it’s been, it’s been really fun. To, I guess, connect. Yeah, it’s, it’s been awesome. And I’m thankful too because I feel like my whole wife’s family, like all my in-laws, actually think that I have a real job now. . And so that’s Cause I think it’s been a question, Marco, so . I’m just kidding. But really guys, we are so thankful for you now, today is a really, Fun episode, and we are gonna give you some awesome stuff today.

So Steve and I were kind of talking about what would be the next logical progression of conversation that we’re gonna have, and I want you guys to stay tuned because not only are we going to give you some serious meat and potatoes today about how do you pick the best markets to invest in, what are those criteria?

What are some of the best markets that you ought to be looking at right now based on that criteria? We’re gonna unlock it all. We’re gonna give it all away to you. In fact, if you stay tuned to the end of the episode, we’re actually gonna give you a link where there’s 36 criteria that we’re gonna talk to today that kind of help us do the research we do to figure out what markets to be in at the right times.

And from that, we went through hundreds. There’s hundreds and hundreds of markets in the country. And we just did a research project that ultimately helped us select the top 12 markets that you ought to be considering. And, and this is different than just a Google search. Like if you go do a Google search, you know, for best markets to invest in in 2020, it’s so crazy cuz a lot of times those links that pop up are gonna be with some personal agenda, right?

It’s gonna be a company that wants you to invest in their real estate. Guys, here’s the agenda for us. We did this research anyway, , so that we knew what markets that we ought to be looking at, making sure that we’re continuing to invest in good markets today, which markets we wanna move into so that we can assist our clients.

And so the agenda is, we wanted to know, and so we’re just gonna give it to you. Well, it just says kind of a, a reminder to ask Kevin. Um, when we go into a market, we stay for good. We’ve gone into seven markets now. And we’re still in all seven markets, even though we’re focused on three markets right now.

Once we go in, we’re there for good and there’s a permanent relationship. Our roots run really deep and we’re in a position right now where we need to open up, uh, another two markets in the next 12 to 18 months. And so we decided to start the research project and we, we completed the first phase of what, uh, the our of our.

And I’m excited actually to kind of share that with everybody. Yeah. Because at the end, at the end of the day, we’re just doing what our listeners are wanting to do. Right. Which is like invest in, you know, the best market that makes sense for the type of real estate investing that we do. That’s right.

Well, and you bring up a really good point, and this is something that if you’re listening, I want you to know. By the way, you know, last couple weeks, I mean, Steve, we talked about how do you define a good deal. Then we talked about removing geography as a condition for investing, and what’s always natural is the next question that we always get after that is always, okay, well then what market should one be investing in?

And that’s a conversation that we have a lot with our clients and with our prospective clients. And so we’re just gonna have that conversation today. We need to know, we need to. For us personally, for our own investment portfolio, but then also for our clients. Cuz a big part of this income replacement thing, it is, you know, we always talk about hitting real estate singles and you hit a real estate single and you let that thing perform.

But over time, you’re gonna take that first or second piece of real estate and leverage it to go buy a few more pieces of real estate and, and the economy changes, right? And markets ebb and flow and shift. And so what may be the perfect market to invest in? Five years ago may not be the best market to buy new properties in or additional properties in today.

It’s not that the homes that you bought in that market five years ago weren’t good investments. They were great investments, but where should I be placing capital and looking to invest tomorrow? And that’s really why we do the research and why we dive into figure it out. And there is a significant amount of research.

That was done. In fact. Steve, do you wanna talk a little bit about how do we establish the criteria and what are some of the things that we think are important to look at when we’re doing this extensive research on what markets to be going to? Yeah, I mean, in fact, let me just jump in. I’m just gonna list off a few of the criteria that are important to us as we begin the process.

Like you have to know the right questions to. Right in the first place. So you need to know, you know, what, what criteria you need to be looking at to begin with. And by the way, before you get into these, So this is what we’re gonna give to everybody. So at the end of the episode, we’ll give you a link and we’re gonna give you the list of criteria that you ought to be considering that we use for our market research, as well as the list of properties that kind of, you know, Kind of rose to the top in doing the research.

We’re gonna give that all to you as kind of just a gift. Like, Hey, here you go. Hopefully it’s beneficial to you. So yeah, go through those criteria, Steve and guys, pay attention to these because it’s more than just, is it a good price? I mean, of course that’s part of it, but there’s so much that goes into.

The establishing whether or not something’s a good market to invest in. I’m air quoting, you can’t see the air quotes, but a good air quote, good market to invest in. Yep, exactly. So as, as part of kind of our overall general look at, uh, uh, looking at a property is we strive to kind of create a score for each of the markets that we’re, we’re vetting.

So we have like an investment score and then what we call kind of a ranking of economic function. So, you know, here here’s just a couple of things that we look at. You know, median wage, three year wage growth, unemployment job growth, education levels, population growth, uh, current and then population growth.

Um, historical. What’s the median home price, Cost of entry level homes, you know, by state. Three year estimated price appreciation, historic home price appreciation. New construction, like housing starts. Average age of homes, Average age of population, um, weather conditions. That’s a big one, Kevin. Yeah, that’s huge.

Um, when, when you have a rental property, if you’re in, in a market where it’s either raining or snowing, You, you get massive vegetation growth that affects the property. There’s nothing that destroys the property more quickly than moisture, um, or bugs or, you know, vegetation growing and yeah. You know, that, that kind of a thing.

Well, I love it. Like, how often do you hear somebody say, when considering investing in real estate, one should be thinking through vegetation growth. Right? Like, nobody thinks about that, but it’s, it can be a big thing. It’s, it’s huge. You don’t know how many, uh, Sewage lines I’ve had to pull out or, you know, have to scope because roots are growing into it and that kinda thing.

Exactly. It’s a big deal. Yeah. The other one is extreme weather. There are some areas where, gosh, it looks like a fantastic place to invest, but because of extreme weather conditions that inf. Affects insurance costs, right? Yes. Um, so for example, I mean, this is one of the things that when I first got into real estate and when I was doing mortgages and we were kind of helping people invest in real estate, I ran into a couple issues with some Utah properties that were like near a river or near a creek, right?

And they were in a flood zone. And because they were in a flood zone, their their, uh, the I. Requirements were astronomical. And you couldn’t get a loan done on that property without the flood insurance. But the flood insurance was so expensive that it totally threw all the numbers outta whack, and now the cash flow didn’t make sense.

And so there are things like that that you’ve gotta consider. I know one of the things before you go on, you know, we do a lot of real estate in Florida, and I always get the question from people in Florida, Well, what about hurricanes? And it’s one of the reasons why, So one of the markets that we love is Orlando and.

Orlando’s in the middle of the state, and if you look at most of the time when hurricanes come through, you may get some wind and you may get some rain, but I, I can’t remember the last time that a hurricane was really, I mean, there was some scares just this last year that, I mean, Disney World shut down, but the hurricane as usual had kind of, you know, I, I guess it kinda lost its steam by the time it got to where we’re doing real estate in the Orlando area.

So stuff like that that you just, most people don’t consider, but you gotta. Well, and that’s just, it is you can, you can invest in a state where there is extreme weather, but there are little pockets, uh, throughout, um, an area that for whatever reason, the geography, the weather condition, what whatever affects that.

They’re not affected the same. Therefore they’re rated different with the insurance and, and you don’t have those same types of, of issues with just little pockets within a state that has those extreme weather conditions. Yeah. Another thing that that really affects the bottom line is property tax. Uh, literally, um, you can own a property in one area.

Five miles away where there’s a state line or something and the property tax situation changes or even just a county line for that matter sometimes, and property taxes change that affects the bottom line sufficient that, you know what made sense five miles away doesn’t make sense. In the area five miles away.

So yeah, it’s cra it’s crazy, but it does, it makes a big difference. You know, income tax rates. Uh, the other thing that’s really important are just some of the rules, regulations, laws, like land is, is the areas that landlord friendly, what are the landlord rights, what are the tenant rights and stuff? Okay.

Real quick on the landlord rights because, and we’ll get into this stuff guys, but I just, whenever I think of landlord rights, so we were just in New York earlier this year and we’ve got an awesome. Friend there. She’s, she, we, we’ve done a lot of real estate with her and she’s, she actually is the president of the, the NYC R.

Right. And she’s awesome. And I actually think we’re, I think we’re, we’re thinking about getting her on the podcast. Yeah. Hopefully we’ll be able to get her on here real soon cuz you gotta hear from her. She’s unbelievable. But we were there. She’s in, she’s in massive high demand. If we can get her that, like, that would be awesome.

And, and I think, I think that we will, we’ve got a great relationship. She’s done a lot with us over the last, you know, probably, I think we can get. Maybe we just gotta bribe her and her husband with a Chick-fil-A shake. But I think, we’ll, we’ll be able, we’ll be able to get ’em on. But anyway, we were just in New York and we were doing a little meeting there for some of the folks in the R, and she brought up this thing about landlord rights in Manhattan.

Do you remember what it was? That they had none. Yeah. . Yeah. It was something like, and, and I mean it was, it was leading. Covid hadn’t hit yet. It was kind of leading up to Covid, but, but there was some kind of sweeping something that got passed in Manhattan and it was something like if your tenant stops paying rent, You couldn’t evict them until they had another suitable place to be able to go and live.

Yep. So I mean, gosh, if you’re a tenant and you can’t afford rent and you can continue to live where you are living without having to pay rent or getting evicted until you have another suitable place to live. There’s no incentive for you to go and find a new place to live, right? And so the landlords were the ones that are gonna get hammered by that.

So this idea of landlord rights, you gotta know. I mean, you may look at something and say, Well, that looks like a good place to live, a good place to invest, um, a good place to own rental real estate. But if it is not in. Favor it, it could cost you some money and it could end up being a bad investment simply because the area that you’re looking at does not have good landlord rights.

Yeah. Another one that goes along with that are, you know, eviction requirements. Is it, is it, is it simpler or is it a complicated six month process? Uh, another one is, you know, rental vacancy rates in, in a, in a, in a given area, price to rent ratio. That’s a critical one in determining whether it makes, uh, you know, good financial sense, three year estimated rent increases.

We talk a lot about the fact that when you buy a single family property, you get a fixed 30 year loan, but then rents go up, you know, in relation to inflation. And so over time you earn more money, but your cost stays. The other thing is states friendly to small business and entrepreneurs. That has to do with job growth.

It has to do with, you know, just the overall business environment and states are ranked that way. What are property insurance costs? That’s, that’s a huge one. Another one that’s really important is just transportation. This is another one that I don’t think a lot of people think about. Yeah. That, that you would even consider.

What is the transportation like and, and you know, the airports like how, uh, how well traveled are the airports or how many people are coming? You gotta consider that stuff. It’s like when, So our, one of our markets, Memphis, Tennessee, one of the, the things that really attracted us to that one, to the state and then specifically to Memphis is Memphis is known as kind of the planes, trains, and automobile, you know, hubs of.

Of the country. It is a transportation hub in terms of, um, air, um, trains and then the freeway system. Just, just all fantastic. Anytime we talk about Memphis and we talk about planes, trains, and automobiles, I, number one, get hungry for Thanksgiving, Turkey because planes, trains, and automobiles is like the best.

Yeah, it’s not the only Thanksgiving movie. And then I also just makes me sad that John Candy’s no longer this. Do you remember Uncle Buck? Like Uncle Buck. That is one of my favorite shows ever. It is such a good show. And plane trades and automobiles is just, oh my gosh. Classic. I’ll never think of pillows the same, but nonetheless.

Yeah, . Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so you know, Freeway system. Um, the other thing is effective mass transit. Um, there are some cities that have just incredible mass transit systems and the ability for people to commute from where they live to the city. Like so we buy in the suburbs, right? For the most part. Yeah. We don’t buy.

In the metropolitan area, it’s always in the msa, like just the area, just outside of the, the main, um, city. And that transit system is critical cuz that’s what allows people to live outside of the, you know, the, the dense densely populated city. Yeah. Then of course HOAs, um, HOAs are kind of a double edged sword.

I love HOAs and I hate HOAs all at the same time. Yeah. I think that they provide such a critical function, especially for an out-of-state investor, because they are the enforcement body that ensures that your property, at least on the exterior, is being well maintained and kept. The lawns are cut. There’s not garbage in the streets according to community.

Standards, right? Yeah, yeah. You know, the, the exteriors of the homes are, they require them to be upkeep properly and, and that’s a good thing. But the problem is that some HOA overcharge or they, they try to add additional services that maybe as a landlord you don’t, you know, want to include. Yeah. And so there, there’s, like I say, um, but for the most part, or they’re the kind, or they, they seem like dictators that roll with an iron fist, right?

Like, that’s the other thing is, and, and that also can be good and bad, right? Yeah. Because it, it enforces the fact that. Your, your property is, is going to be, um, you know, well looked after. You’ve got like this, this third party, you know, organization that is looking at and seeing your property and they’re letting you know if things are falling out of line, if it’s not being up, upkeep properly, and it kind of keeps in check.

You know, it helps to keep in check your tenant and your property management. So, so it’s not to say that buying a home in an HOA is bad or good. You just have, it’s just one of the factors we need to consider. Yeah, yeah. You have to consider, you know, the cost of it, what they include, that kind of a thing.

So, super important. Uh, the other thing is like, you know, foreign entity registration of LLCs if, you know, if you planned to open up an llc. And so, I mean, I’ve listed off a, a number of things, we’ll kind of hang tight there. I I hit most of them, but these are the, you know, many of the criteria. That we look at and we dive deep into each of those and there’s so much to talk about, to think about, to vet in each of those different areas.

Yeah. And some of the more important ones, or not, maybe not even important, but just the ones that I know when, when I started to kind of do more research about where to invest or, or you know, when I started to get more and more questions about why one should invest here, there, or elsewhere. Some of the ones that have always stood out to me as interesting that I don’t think a lot of people always consider, maybe some people do, but I is is stuff like, like the job growth, right?

Or like the job market and I mean, it’s just a, it’s kind of a simple calculation in your brain to think and say, Well, I would like to own a property that has a good job market and that is experiencing good job growth. Because in theory that. That housing will be in higher demand. If I own the housing that’s in high demand, then I own part of that.

What could be limited supply somewhere where demand is high. And if it’s a good job market with good economic growth, then maybe I’m attracting higher quality tenants that will pay the rent faithfully and that will pay the level of rent that I need to collect on the type of home that I’m doing. And so it’s stuff like that that I think for the most part, at least for.

When I first started to think about real estate investing, like, here’s what you hear, right? It’s the, because it’s rich dad, poor dad, or it’s, you know, it’s the stuff and it’s like, invest in real estate cuz you’re gonna get residual income, right? You’re gonna, you’re gonna have casual. It’s the stuff that we’ve talked about as to why we like real estate.

But, but then when you drill down and say, Well what is actually some of the stuff that’s going to mean that appreciation may happen, that’s going to mean. That cashflow was going to take place, that’s going to mean that you have a market for the potential future sale of your property. And that’s why we go into all of these criteria, right?

It’s because the, all of the factors that Steve just listed, which he just listed 35 by the way, in case you were wondering, and, and you lost track. The reason that we’re looking at all of those is it has to make sense for you to invest in that market in the short term and especially in the long run, cuz everything we do, this whole real estate game that we are playing here with income replacement one property at a time over time means you’re gonna buy real estate singles and those need to continue to produce for you.

So, If you would just go get a deal, cuz it looks good on paper and because you know the price looks really low and it looks like you could have this kind of equity. And we talked all about that in another episode. Um, if you’re not considering things like, well what is the neighborhood like? And is it attracting a high quality tenant?

So for example, I remember, you know, doing real estate that was fairly inexpensive, but it was in like the older parts of like Kansas City, right? And these were homes, They weren’t terribly expensive. They were a hundred something years old and they were not the greatest of neighborhoods. Now, not a knock on Kansas City, it’s just, I remember.

When I, when I started to look at, okay, what are all the repairs gonna be? What is the upkeep gonna be? What type of tenant is it attracting? And all of a sudden it, even though that on paper that price alone looked good, all of the other factors made it maybe not as good of a deal. And Kevin, just to be clear, like that neighborhood was probably a fantastic neighborhood, just not for an investment scenario.

There’s the key, right? Yeah. So, so that’s, that’s one of the, the critical things cuz at the end of the. We all show up to work and we all. Number one to make money like that is the goal. I don’t know if you ever read the book, Kevin, the goal, but Yeah. Like for all of the reasons to be in business or for all of the reasons to invest in real estate, which are many, because there’s lots of philanthropic and lots of, you know, good reasons other than money to work and to start a business or to invest in real estate.

But make no mistake, the number one reason is to make money. If you’re not making money, then. Can’t stay in the game. And so that, that’s one that, that’s the most critical factor. And so all of these criteria at the end of the day lead back to ensuring that there isn’t some hidden cost, that there isn’t something that’s gonna suppress the increasing value of, of your property.

That there are reasons why. Your property is going to increase in value. So all of these criteria are, are very specific in nature and are carefully selected specifically to ensure that we can maximize return on investment. Well, and, and here’s the thing I kind of think about in terms of an analogy, like sometimes when, when people ask us about the kind of real estate that we do, right?

I always like to say that the kind of real estate we do is, it’s kind of like a. Right. Um, I could go by, so if all I want is a vehicle to get me from point A to point B, I could go buy millions of different vehicles that might get me from point A to point B. Some of those vehicles may have a little bit more luxury, some are gonna have less.

Some may only get me one or two trips. The others may get me all of the trips that I need for all of the years to come. And I think about the fact that, look, you could go buy real estate and it could be a beat up Toyota, right? And it could just, the, the, the real estate or the Toyota could be a. 30, 40 years old have hundreds of thousands of miles on it, and it may get you from point A to point B if that point is just a couple miles and you only need to get there once or twice over the next couple years.

However, it saved you money, right? So the thought is, Oh, well I can go get this. This cheaper version of the thing that I need, and it may serve its purpose for a while, but it may also may not hold its value or hold its ability to provide for you what you need for as long as you would like it to. Then you could go get maybe a newer Toyota.

Not that a newer Toyota is that much worse than Lexus. It’s just a slightly different type of. Model, right? There’s gonna be a few additional features in the Lexus that are gonna be in the Toyota. We’re not saying that the Toyota is better than the Lexus, or the Lexus is better than the Toyota. It’s just a simple function of what do I choose?

But a Lexus is also not gonna be a Ferrari, right? It’s not going to be a super high end luxury vehicle. And so you kind of have to consider that when you’re looking at criteria. You need to know, are you gonna drive a, an old, uh, you know, beater type car? Are you gonna want a good car that gets you from point A to point B?

Are you gonna want a good car that gets you from point A to point B with a little bit more luxury? Right. And in real estate terms, that luxury to me would be just making sure that you have the luxury of attracting good tenants. Year after year, or attracting tenants that are willing to pay an increased rent year over year, or attracting tenants that not only are they good tenants and it’s a good market and it’s a good, you know, area within a zip code inside of a market, but maybe it’s even a tenant that in years in, in a year or two, maybe they wanna buy the property from you, right?

Maybe you turn around and you can sell it to them, and now you’ve got an end user built into the property. By the way, this is something that not a lot of people, Consider if you go buy real estate just for the purpose. So this is another question that we get, and we’ll do a whole nother episode maybe. On it.

Who knows, maybe we won’t. But I, I get the question a lot, like, why don’t you guys do multifamily? Or why don’t you guys do, you know, uh, apartment complexes or syndicate deals or whatever. And I, this is kind of the way I look at it, Steve, cuz it’s part of this criteria that we do research on. We like to go to markets.

Where the neighborhoods are largely filled with either we’ll call ’em end users or just primary residential, uh, people, right? Where it’s not just a neighborhood full of renters, right? Usually, most of the neighborhoods where we go and invest in, it’s a pretty healthy mix of, of primary residents, owners, and renters.

And here’s why I like that. If you’re buying an investment property or you’re buying an apartment complex or whatever, yeah, you may be able to hold onto it forever and just cash flow, but if you ever. Sell it. You’re selling to another investor. So now you’re an investor. Selling to an investor that changes the entire makeup of the deal.

Whereas if you’re an investor selling to an end user, so if I go buy a home and I put a great tenant in there, cuz it’s a good home and a good neighborhood and a good job market with a great economy with good growth, that’s happening with good potential appreciation. And I’ve got a great tenant that’s attracted to that property because this property is a Lexus, right?

So I’m attracting a Lexus type A tenant. And they’re in it for a couple years and then they say, Man, we love the neighborhood. We love it here. We love our neighbors. Our kids love the school. This is a great place to be. We’d like to buy the home. Now you’re selling to an end user. That changes that dynamic of that interaction significantly over just buying maybe a home that’s just a rental that’s maybe a little less expensive, maybe not a nice of a market that you’re hoping to flip to another investor later or whatever.

But these are all part of the criteria that we’re looking at. For our brand of real estate, we’re not going to doing Ferrari’s, but we’re also not doing, you know, beaters that are 30 years old and have 500,000 miles on ’em. We’re doing like good Lexus type real estate, and that’s just a choice that we’ve made based on this criteria and based on what we’ve seen perform consistently for more than a decade now.

Well, and, and, and that’s, that’s just it, Kevin, is, there’s a lot of real estate and I’ll be, you know, super frank with, with, you know, between me and you and everybody and, and. There are other ways to make more money more quickly. Of course, in real estate, that’s than what we do. Yeah. Right. But it’s, And we know that, but it’s, It’s more work.

Yeah. It’s more management. It’s more maintenance. It’s more of a job. And I’d say it’s more risk too. Well, yes, whenever there’s more return, there’s more risk like 100% of the time. And so we’ve just chosen kind of this lane in the real estate world to accommodate. Like number one, our needs for real estate and investing individually and as a company.

And we have found like this group of, of people who are very likeminded and in a very similar position where it’s like we work hard at our jobs all day long. We’re passionate about what it is that we do. We’re really good at what it is that we do, and we don’t necessarily have a ton of time to go figure out how to do other things.

And real estate is a very knowledge intensive, time intensive type of investment if you’re trying to do it completely and totally on your own. And that’s kind of where we come in and we are able to do, you know, most of the heavy lifting for our clients and facilitate their ability to invest in real estate.

And that’s why we advocate, you know, the type of real estate. That we do because it does take less time while maximizing returns and taking advantage of an ownership investment type opportunity, which is real estate. And one thing that you touched on that, that I absolutely love there, um, in your kind of monologue there is that.

One of the reasons why we try to go into neighborhoods where the vast majority of the people living in the homes are owners is because there is an ownership mentality where if you own something, you typically take better care of it. True period. Yep. And that’s not a knock against anybody who’s renting or anything because they have ownership of, of, of other things.

But the bottom line is the reality is, is, is an owner typically takes, you know, a little bit better care of a property than, than a tenant does. And so we like to be in those neighborhoods where the majority, our owners and that kind of, Influences our tenants to behave and act more like homeowners because their friends, their neighbors are owners.

And one day our tenants, like the vast majority of them, will become home owners. Um, it’s just that at this point in, in time, in their lives, They’re learning and preparing to become actual homeowners, right? Yeah. And, and so living in a property is giving them practice and being around other homeowners is giving them experience and influence to become those homeowners, you know, in the very short.

In your future. You know, that’s not, and that’s not something we put on the criteria, but it’s really important. What is the behavior going to be like of the tenant based on the neighborhood and the type of real estate that they are in? And that’s a big deal cuz it does, it makes a big difference for your investment.

It makes a big deal for the future of your investment. It makes a, it, it’s a big deal and makes a big. For your tenant and how they’re gonna pay rent and how long they might live in the property. Because the overall experience for them as a tenant in your property, in that neighborhood, in that zip code, in that market, based on all of this criteria, can have an impact on the long term performance.

So Kevin, one, one thing that we didn’t include, you know, in our research and mainly because you know, we did most of this research, Prior to Covid or as Covid was just kind of getting started. Yeah. Right. And what we have seen is there is, like I’m telling you, there is a migration to some degree of individuals living in higher density housing.

To which a lot of times exist in major metropolitan like downtown areas. Yeah. To lower density housing, which is single family. Yep. Like there, there is greater demand right now than we have ever seen in the history of our company. Our property managers are telling us it’s like we need more homes because we don’t have enough homes to supply the demand right now for.

Renting single family properties. Yeah. And it, it’s an area, it’s a market that is, is very desirable and because of the price point where we try to be, and because we typically buy it just below the median home price, um, the properties that we rent, Are typically not much more, or maybe even very equivalent to, you know, an apartment in a higher density downtown type area.

And so people are kind of, you know, leaving that higher density to have a little bit more space, have a yard and a driveway and space between, you know, the air that they’re breathing and the, that their neighbors are, are breathing. And so, Um, what’s kind of nice about where we have been buying anyways is it’s typically just, just outside of kind of this, the metropolitan city limits, Right?

Um, in, in, in the suburbs. And, and it’s been a very easy transition for, for people, you know, in the, the metro area to, to come out and, and find places to rent in and specifically in, in properties owned by our, our clients. Yeah. So to kind of summarize, There’s a lot of ways that you could u there’s a lot of research methods that you could use to go and figure out where you wanna go and do real estate.

The research method that we’re using is based on a slew, dozens of criteria that we’re doing research inside of each of those criteria so that we know what the best markets are to invest in. And so at the end of the day, here’s what I hope you’ll kind of take away from this episode. Investing in real.

Choosing your market. Even choosing what type of real estate you wanna do shouldn’t just be based on the idea of how much money it would make you and should be based on data and research that helps to indicate how much money it will make you over time. And I think that that’s kind of the difference.

It’s not just I can flip and I can make money. What type of real estate do you want to do for this long term consistent one property at a time income replacement mentality. That’s the approach that we take. And so we’re gonna give you all of our criteria. We’re gonna give, we, we think it would be awesome for you to have it.

So we’re gonna, if you go to dfy dash real estate.com/market research, okay? Dfy real estate.com/market research. On that page, we will give you, Full list of criteria that we went over today and we didn’t even talk about it, but we’ll actually give you our top 12 markets based on the research that we did.

What are those markets with just maybe a little blurb on why we like those markets and why the weighted score indicated that those might be good markets that you wanna consider. Well, we’ll also include an executive summary of the top five markets as well. Oh, great. Like with, with a little write up on each of the, the, those five markets.

Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s do that. So, Go visit dfy dash real estate.com/market research to get the list of criteria to get, uh, kind of an executive summary on the best markets that you maybe want to be considering right now. And thank you as always for listening to replace your income. So with that, that’s our episode today.

So Steve, thanks man. It’s been great to be here. Okay. All right guys. We will see you next week. Take care. Thanks so much for listening to Replace Your Income with Kevin and Steve. Do you want to connect with us and other income replacement rangers out to obliterate the status quo and experience real retirement with income replacement through real estate type done for you Real Estate USA in your Facebook search bar?

And make sure to like our company’s page, send us a message while you’re there. And I’ll send you a personal hello and make sure you are on our weekly property scouting emails where you can view weekly deals right in your inbox. Until then, thanks so much for joining us on Replace Your Income and just remember income replacement for you and your family may only be one property away.

See you next week.